The psychology Department of Dayton University reports that loud talk can be ten times more distracting than the sound of a jackhammer. Loud, incessant chatter can make a listener nervous and irritable, and even start him on the road to insanity.

It's Americans being asked really relatively easy questions ( Like how many sides are on a triangle.. a country that begins with the letter U, and who Tony Blair is) and failing miserably for the most part.

The psychology Department of Dayton University reports that loud talk can be ten times more distracting than the sound of a jackhammer. Loud, incessant chatter can make a listener nervous and irritable, and even start him on the road to insanity.

Having worked in a mad-house of a call center for nearly, I wholeheartedly agree with this position. *whimper* Despite my efforts otherwise, I'm still answering phones all day..but at least it's quiet here. :)

While I was growing up, my mom was suffering through severe hearing loss and we didn't really have the income to get hearing aids... by the time I was 10 or 12, to talk to her you had to yell,.. to yell at her you had to scream,.. the TV was blaring, she'd turn up the speaker on the phone all the way, etc... I just got desensitized to blaring loud noises and my natural speaking voice turned into a bellow without me realizing it...

Im getting better at controlling myself, but when I get frustrated or excited,.. I can SEE peoples faces go from, "Oh,... thats interesting" to, "O my god, why is she yelling at me?! MAKE IT STOP!!"

Also: People are asshats. And the American school system WANTS us dumb. I got in trouble every day in English class starting in 7th grade for "reading too much" and "reading above my level"... I was kicked out of school my sophmore year... but the girl who stood up in class once and said, "Did they drive all the way here from Chinese?!" In reference to a group of Japanese exchange students when we were 16,... graduated with letters and honors...

O and 1 in 5 people doesn't know how to do simple addition/subtraction. At least once a day someone does the math wrong when giving me a tip on a credit card slip.

"Ok, so it cost $32.74? I'll just make it $35 even." They'll spend a second in their head doing the math to fill out how much that makes the tip, since there is a specific tip-line to fill out.."Ok, $3.26, there ya go, hon."

They'll usually get the change right, but the dollar amount wrong.. for some reason they forget to take away the one,...ALL THE TIME....

But, I dont mind... if its a good tip, Ill let them keep their mistaken dollar, if it was a bad tip, I keep it. "You said a 3.26 tip, I dont care that you wrote down the total as $35,.. Im taking my 3.26 tip and charging your bitch ass $36!" which chuckling maniacally over the credit card machine at the end of the night.

I've seen that video with the americans, and sadly, a friend & I did a test with that one.. 'Name a country that begins with U.'

I don't think not saying United States, or United Kingdom doesn't really imply lack of intelligence, just a lack of thought, I don't say I'm from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (full official name), and you probably don't say your from the United States of America.

Uruguay and Uganda are far better choices, because they don't carry any other aliases, like Britain or America. :P

I totally thought of Uganda when they asked the question and felt a little foolish when he was like "What about this country? " lol. Oh well.

And I really don't think it was ~staged... but I think they probably asked A LOT of other people that gave really good and smart answers and they just took all of those out of the presentation they put together.

Videos such as this: it's like walking into a prison and being surprised/appalled that everyone there has been convicted of a crime; they edit together the 'best' bad responses and cut out all the good ones.

What percentage of the persons in our lives actually would fail at answering all these questions? How many persons, out of more than 300,000,000 in the U.S., supplied the bad answers in this video?

Also, check out the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation of this video's subtitler.

I think these videos are funny and horrifying to watch. But, often, when I see one, I feel compelled to remind those around me about the nature of such compilations.

Jay Leno's "Jay Walking" segments would fail to entertain his studio and broadcast audiences if most persons in the audiences didn't know the right answers to the questions so they could be appalled by the wrong answers.

It makes sense that speech is more distracting. We're naturally attune to the natural sounds of our own species, and especially to those in our own language, because they are full of much, much more information than the sound of a jackhammer is.

I think there's certainly a lot of good to be said for America. But a lot of bad too, and the bad gets more attention. Though sometimes people bring attention in the bad and try and show it to be something positive.. when it's reeeeally not. That's always irritated me.

what is scariest about the video is that people actually believed that North Korea, France and other countries were where Australia should be on a map. What we didn't see, though, is the group of people who said "Isn't that where Australia is supposed to be?"

Damn limey fruits!

When that British film crew showed and started interviewing at my family reunion, I knew we were in trouble. If the questions had revolved around agriculture and firearms, we would have looked like freakin' geniuses. But no, it was all "where's France" and "who's Castro". Hell, you can't expect a bunch of hog farmers to know that shit.